“Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would start a 2016 presidential contest with an enormous advantage: She obviously is by far the best known and her more than 20 years in the public spotlight allows her to create a very favorable impression on the American people,” wrote Peter Brown, assistant director at Quinnipiac’s polling division.

Ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: She leads all prospective 2016 presidential candidates.

Of course, Clinton has been way up in past polls. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken in October of 2007, she enjoyed a 33-point advantage, 53-20 percent, over Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in the race for the Democratic nomination. She even defeated Obama 45-31 percent among voters seeking “new directions and new ideas.”

Other prospective Democrats do not do so well in the latest Quinnipiac survey.

Christie has a 43-40 percentage over Vice President Joe Biden, and a big 43-28 percent lead over New York Gov. (and Al Pacino lookalike) Andrew Cuomo. Biden has a 45-38 percent lead over Rubio, and runs narrowly ahead of Ryan by a 45-42 percent margin.

Christie has been snubbed by the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference: CPAC is an annual cattle call and ideological correctness test for the Republicans’ would-be White House hopefuls. They appear sandwiched in between tub-thumping speeches by National Rifle Association nabobs and denunciations of such past GOP progressives as President Theodore Roosevelt.

“Although some Republicans don’t think New Jersey Gov. Christopher Christie is conservative enough for their taste, he runs best of the three Republicans and would defeat two of the top Democrats,” Brown said.

Two other poll findings were of note.

By a whopping 71-20 percent margin, Americans disapprove of Republicans in Congress. “The Republican brand is not doing very well these days,” Brown observed.